Air Force veteran Bill Lynch, owner of the Washington Spirit soccer team, deserves a round of applause for the ingenious trick he pulled on soccer player Megan Rapinoe.

According to Slate magazine, when Rapinoe’s team, the Seattle Reign, traveled to Maryland Wednesday to play against the Washington Spirit, Lynch made the decision to play the national anthem while the teams were still in their respective locker rooms.

Lynch’s goal was to stop Rapinoe from joining San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protest and kneeling during the playing of the anthem.

“We decided to play the anthem in our stadium ahead of schedule rather than subject our fans and friends to the disrespect we feel such an act would represent,” the team owner later explained in a statement. “To willingly allow anyone to hijack this tradition that means so much to millions of Americans … would effectively be just as disrespectful as doing it ourselves.”

Washington Spirit prevents Megan Rapinoe taking a knee during national anthem by playing anthem ahead of schedule. pic.twitter.com/Oc54ljhFe1

Of course, the preemptive measure would not have even been necessary in the first place had Rapinoe not jumped on the Colin Kaepernick bandwagon, which according to Slate she first did during her game the previous weekend against the Chicago Red Stars.

Thanks to Lynch’s quick thinking, Rapinoe was unable to repeat this contemptuous stunt a second time.

However, not everybody was pleased with his decision. Jeff Blush, commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League, later complained that he would have preferred it if Lynch and Rapinoe would have had an “honest dialogue” and then worked through their differences.